Lower Sorbian to Punjabi: where, from where and what someone goes to do
A fronted source phrase may identify an object rather than a place
Pankau’s colloquial Lower Sorbian examples include a question asking in what shoes someone is walking. The preposition and question word occur before material separating them from the shoe noun. Despite that order, the question concerns the footwear, not simply the place where walking happens.
Punjabi University’s teaching resource distinguishes kitthē, asking where, from kitthōṃ, asking from where. These are useful target distinctions for location and origin, but neither can replace every Lower Sorbian question beginning with a preposition. The meaning of the complete source interrogative phrase decides what information is requested.
For an original source enquiry asking which shoes a traveller wore, a target question meaning where the traveller walked would solicit a different answer. Retaining the walking verb does not rescue that change. Recover the source noun connected to its separated question word before selecting a Punjabi location or item expression.
Origin must not collapse into simple location
The Punjabi resource also contrasts itthē, here, with itthōṃ, from here. The distinction identifies whether a place is the setting of an event or its starting point. The shared location vocabulary does not make the expressions interchangeable in a route description.
Lower Sorbian’s inflectional and prepositional relationships should be interpreted before the target adverb is chosen. If an original source message asks where a journey began, the answer needs an origin. If it asks where the traveller is waiting, replacing that with an origin question introduces movement that the source did not assert.
This becomes especially important when the source mentions both a place and the footwear question above. One phrase identifies equipment associated with the person; another can identify location or movement. A broad target where expression cannot represent both dependencies just because each source phrase contains a preposition.
Going for an action differs from acting before going
DOBES identifies a Lower Sorbian supine used after motion verbs. That compact construction can express an activity associated with going. It deserves to be understood as a relationship between the journey and the activity, rather than replaced by any familiar target nonfinite expression.
The Punjabi teaching page gives kam karke as after working. That sequential meaning is different from an original source plan to go somewhere in order to work. A target phrase expressing completed work before departure would reverse the intended timing if the source describes work as the journey’s purpose.
Compare an original instruction to leave after finishing a task with one to leave in order to perform it elsewhere. The first places the task before departure; the second places the intended task at the destination. Punjabi offers ways to express adverbial relationships, but selecting among them requires the actual Lower Sorbian relation. Location, origin, sequence and purpose must remain distinct even when their target expressions all function adverbially.
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